Because of the small size and weak bones of infants and young children, they cannot be protected from crashes while riding in vehicles by conventional vehicle safety equipment such as seat belts and the like. It had been common to provide auxiliary seating for young children vehicles but only recently with the increased emphasis on vehicle safety have child seats for vehicles been engineered with a primary goal of providing safety for the user child.
There have been child safety seats proposed which include a harness having an abdominal pad to absorb crash forces. See for example "ABDOMINAL RESTRAINT AND BELT STORAGE MEANS FOR CHILD SAFETY SEATS FOR VEHICLES," Ser. No. 472,079, filed May 22, 1974 to Tanaka. One problem associated with child safety seats in general and especially those having abdominal pads is the adjustment of the pads so that it fits the child seated in the child safety seat correctly.
It was recognized in "CHILD SAFETY SEAT FOR VEHICLES WITH HARNESS RELEASE INACCESSIBLE TO CHILD PASSENGER," to Henderson and Broughton, Ser. No. 471,465, filed May 20, 1974, that the harness should not be releasably buckled to the abdominal pad. This is because it may be possible for the child to release the buckle and eliminate his protection from the pad and harness. Therefore, a permanent connection between the harness webbing and the pad was proposed with the buckle located in an area beneath the seat so that it could not be reached by the child. One disadvantage of that system was upon unbuckling, the buckle would hang loose and it was a minor drawback to have to find the buckle in a slightly different location each time the child was to be strapped into the seat. However, even with this minor drawback, location of the buckle beneath the seat is considered advantageous.
Another minor drawback with the prior seats is that there was often excess webbing which increased the cost of the unit and also made more probable the chance of tangling webbing. Of course, with any child safety seat it may be necessary to extract the child rapidly therefrom, and any tangled webbing may interfere with rapid egress.
Therefore, one object of the present invention is to provide an improved child safety seat wherein the buckle is permanently located in a fixed position out of reach of a child sitting in the seat. Another object of the invention is to provide a harness for a child safety seat including an abdominal pad which utilizes the minimum amount of webbing while yielding the maximum amount of adjustability. By eliminating excess webbing, another object is met whereby storage means for excess webbing can be eliminated. It is an object of the invention to provide a child safety seat which the user parent can easily and quickly seat the child therein but in an emergency can rapidly extract the child therefrom. Another object of the invention is to provide an improved adjustment means for determining the position of the abdominal pad of the child safety seat. Another object of the invention is to meet the above objects at a low cost, minimizing the amount of webbing and hardware in the child safety seat and encouraging the use of plastic parts to make the child safety seat lightweight and easily transportable.